


If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belsavis

by joyeusenoelle



Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-18 09:29:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7309510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joyeusenoelle/pseuds/joyeusenoelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darth Nox and her crew must pay another visit to Belsavis.</p><p>(Set after Nox's ascension to the Dark Council but before the end of her storyline.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

<You tried to kill me, little Sith,> Khem Val rumbled. <That cannot go unpunished.>

Tipanyu grinned. “Go ahead and try.”

Khem stared at the Sith for a long time. Then he slammed his hands on the table, making the holographic figures between them stutter. <Pah. It is a game for children. Not worth my time.> He stood up and stalked off.

Tipanyu leaned back on the couch, her hands behind her head. “You’ll get me next time, I’m sure.”

“I have to agree with the Dashade, apprentice,” said Zash, speaking through the mouth she shared with Khem Val. “What use is this game when you could be training or meditating?”

Ashara looked up from her novel. “Actually, dejarik is excellent strategic training, my lords. We used it in the Jedi Temple as a way to teach the value of thinking of the whole battlefield, rather than the single fight.”

“Ha, the Jedi Temple.” Zash laughed. “Where sitting still too long won’t draw a knife in your back. It must have been so... _pleasant_.”

“Oh, there was plenty of challenge, my... lords.” Ashara trailed off and returned to her novel, a slight flush on her cheeks.

“Now, now,” Tipanyu said, dismissing the holographic game and standing. “Teasing my apprentice is my job, Zash.”

“I must find my fun somewhere, _apprentice_. After all, the Dashade gives me little opportunity anymore.”

Khem Val’s face twisted. <Our ideas of fun are much different, I think.>

“You will both get a chance to indulge your desires, my friends.” Tipanyu walked to the intercom, but it chimed as she approached.

“Coming out of hyperspace.” Andronikos’s voice was a little tinny over the comm; Tipanyu made a note to have 2V-R8 check the wiring. “No signs of any opposition. I guess they really don’t know we’re coming.”

“Glad to hear it. How long until we make the planet?”

“Few minutes. You’d better gear up.”

“Got it.” Tipanyu clicked the comm off and headed to her wardroom to get changed.

A few minutes later, she had exchanged her casual tunic and breeches for the imposing silver-and-black robes of a Sith Lord. She settled her ancestor’s mask over her head; it clicked into place in her collar and the internal display came up, and she ran the standard diagnostic. Even after centuries of neglect, the electronics still worked like new. Another check, on and off, confirmed that her inherited lightsaber was still functioning correctly. She hooked the saber to her belt, took a deep breath, and returned to the common room. Her associates stood as she approached.

“Khem Val, I require your presence on this trip,” Tipanyu said. The Dashade nodded. “Ashara, you will accompany us to the surface. From there, I will give you further instructions. Andronikos, stay here; I need you to keep the ship prepared for immediate departure.”

<Where is Xalek?> Khem rumbled.

“Perhaps you were not present when I sent him off. Xalek is running an errand for me, retrieving an artifact from a new dig on Tattooine.”

“I still don’t understand why I couldn’t have gone,” Ashara said.

Tipanyu shook her head. “The dig is a Jedi expedition. They were unwilling to bargain. I felt that perhaps Xalek could convince the workers to continue once the Jedi were handled.”

“...I see,” Ashara said, and closed her mouth tightly.

Tipanyu looked between Khem Val and Ashara. “Are you ready to depart?”

“Yes, my lord,” Ashara said, and Khem echoed the sentiment. 

“Very well. Andronikos, dock us with the orbital station. It is time we paid another visit to Belsavis.”


	2. Chapter 2

The shuttle flew close to the ground, the pilot - exceptionally tense and alert thanks to the nature of his passengers - dodging hills and rare treetops as he skimmed toward the outskirts of the prison complex. “We’re nearly to the drop point.”

Tipanyu, back in the passenger compartment, pressed the intercom button. “Good. Keep flying and wait for us at the specified coordinates. You may leave if you haven’t heard from us in a week.”

“Roger,” came the pilot’s voice, and Tipanyu tapped the control to lower the passenger ramp. “We’re away,” she sent, and she and Khem Val leapt from the widening gate. Tipanyu glided the hundred or so meters to the ground, using the Force to slow her fall; the Dashade merely plummeted, and was on his feet and dusting himself off when Tipanyu landed.

<A true Sith would simply have jumped,> Khem said.

“A true Sith values her knees and back,” Tipanyu replied. She looked around, pulled out a datapad and examined it. “It looks like we landed about half a kilometer off target. The closest tower also has a maintenance hatch, but the reports Ashara pulled indicate that the tunnel it’s connected to runs through a Sithspawn nest. What do you think?”

<I will devour them whole, little Sith. They are no match for me.> The Dashade’s teeth were always showing, but Tipanyu got the distinct impression that he was grinning.

“Very well. We’ll make for that tower and fight our way through.” She began striding off, and heard Khem’s heavy footfalls behind her.

A five-minute walk later, the Sith and the Dashade stood at the base of a hundred-meter observation tower, part of the wall that surrounded a medium-security section of the main Belsavis prison complex. A one-meter hatch, closely grilled and bolted in place, sat at the very base of the tower. “The alarms will be set, of course, but they will be expecting someone to break out, not in. Would you do the honors?”

<As you wish,> Khem said, and bent, grabbing the grating and yanking. Chunks of ferrocrete came away with the grate, and Tipanyu nodded appreciatively.

“Your strength is, as always, a great asset, Khem Val,” she said, and made to enter the hatch. His broad arm shot out and stopped her.

<I will go first. If there are Sithspawn, I want to be first to taste their lives.>

Tipanyu shrugged and backed up. “As you like, Khem. I’ll follow you in.”

Khem reached for the opening and paused, shaking his head. “I can’t believe you’re allowing this beast to order you around, apprentice,” came Zash’s voice.

“If he wants to be between me and any monsters in the tunnels, who am I to argue?”

“Then you should have ordered him to go first!”

“You would only have chastised me for my cowardice. At least this way, his dignity is intact, and perhaps he will think better of me in the future.”

“Your kindness to your lessers will be your undoing.”

“I assure you, in the matter of going toe-to-toe with a Sithspawn, I am proud to call Khem Val my better.”

Vash made a disappointed noise and subsided, and Khem shook his head as if driving off a fly. <You should not allow the witch to speak to you in such a fashion.>

“Words, Khem, they are only words. She has no power and knows it. I allow her these little tantrums; I owe her that much for inspiring my rise to these heights. Shall we enter the tunnel?”

Khem Val looked at Tipanyu as though he were staring into her soul. Then he ducked through the opening and dropped into darkness.


	3. Chapter 3

As Tipanyu dropped into the access tunnel, she noticed the alarm panels. Six of them were set into the wall around the former hatch so they couldn’t be pried off, but flickers of lightnings from the Sith’s fingertips put an end to their usefulness. “Hopefully I’ll have shorted out some of the cameras down the line, too,” she said, as the lightning died around her hands, “but we should assume we’re being watched.”

<We are always being watched, little Sith,> Khem Val said, his eyes narrowed. <To believe otherwise is to be prey.>

“That’s why I like you, Khem,” Ti said. “You always have a way of reminding me how vulnerable I am.”

The Dashade rumbled and started off into the tunnel; Tipanyu toggled the low-light visor on her helmet and followed. She was unworried about Khem Val; Dashades had no trouble seeing in even the dimmest light. “Let me know if you feel any Sithspawn _before_ you leap into the fray.”

<That will alert them to our presence.>

“A risk I am willing to take, Khem. I feel sure you could take a Sithspawn even if you were wearing bells and bright colors.”

<I could defeat a Sithspawn missing two legs and an arm.>

“Then a second of warning won’t hurt you too much.”

<Very well, little Sith.>

The pair continued, following Tipanyu’s datapad map, until about a hundred meters before the tunnel opened into a junction. Khem Val put his hand back as they approached, slowing Tipanyu to a stop. <Sithspawn,> he said. <Four, and another three in the tunnels beyond.>

Tipanyu nodded. They were in her perception as well, vague shadows in the Force that milled about, restlessly pacing the junction. “They must be gathering here for some purpose. But what?”

<We will not discover that until we destroy them.>

“Agreed,”, Tipanyu said, and they sprinted the last hundred meters to the junction. Khem leapt into the center of the room, barely lit by a grate far above and his vibroblade caught a Sithspawn’s horns; as they struggled, he struck a second on the skull with his fist, and it dropped, stunned. Tipanyu’s lightsaber flew to her hand, and she ignited it with a hiss. The Force leapt from her free hand and caught up a third Sithspawn in a twisting column of air; as the fourth leapt for her, she met its charge with a blast of lightning from her fingertips and followed that with a slash from her saber that left the monster reeling.

“Khem! Are you well?” Tipanyu shouted, the Sithspawn before her growling almost loudly enough to drown her out. The Dashade growled in response, and she could see his vibroblade flashing in the twilight. Her lightsaber came about to take one of the Sithspawn’s horns off, and it yowled and caught her hand with another horn. The impact knocked the lightsaber from her hand, and she growled back at the Sithspawn, drawing on the Force to knock it back toward Khem Val. She brought both hands up before her, and as the Sithspawn recovered, she threw lightning toward the beast with both hands; she could see its spine arch and buckle under the onslaught, and by the time her rage exhausted itself, it was lying lifeless on the ground, its flesh smoking.

She called the lightsaber back to her hand and turned to the final Sithspawn, still turning in her whirlwind, just as Khem Val did. Drawing again on the Force, she began to drive wedges into the creature’s mind, an onslaught that took her only a moment to establish; once the Dark Side had its grip on a victim, it rarely let go of its own accord. Lightning erupted from her fingers again as the Dashade hacked at the beast, and it was a matter of moments before the Sithspawn lay dead on the bricks of the junction room.

Her lightsaber hissed off and she returned it to her belt, leaning against the side of the tunnel so she could recover and catch her breath. “Khem,” she called, “were they guarding anything important?”

The Dashade looked up from a pile of what looked like rubbish at the center of the room. <Little Sith,> he said, <I believe you will want to see this.>


	4. Chapter 4

Tipanyu came down the stairs into the junction room, stepping around the dismembered corpses of both Sithspawn and what looked like recent victims. In the center of the room, Khem Val stood over a set of armor, curiously intact except that its chestplate had been separated at the stomach by three long gashes. <Long dead, I think,> Khem said.

“I think you’re right.” Tipanyu knelt beside the armor and ran her fingers over the metal and cloth, then turned the helmet so she could see its faceplate. “This looks like a Sith mask, but I don’t recognize it,” she said. “Zash, do you know this mask?”

“No, it’s not familiar to me.” Zash-in-Khem’s-body crouched to examine the armor. “It’s old. The fabric is starting to decay, see?” The Dashade’s claw ran along the ragged edge of the cloth undershirt, which disintegrated at her touch. “The Sithspawn might not have touched it, and I couldn’t even begin to guess why, but the moisture down here is having its effects anyway.”

Tipanyu nodded. “I should at least take the mask. The Council might be able to identify it.”

“That will not be necessary,” came a voice from the corner of the room. Tipanyu stood and turned, her lightsaber in her hand and snapping on, but the voice continued. “Nor will that. I mean you no harm, young Sith, and could not harm you anyway.” A blue-limned figure stepped out of the shadow, and Tipanyu grimaced under her mask.

“You’ll excuse me if I stay on my guard anyway. I don’t exactly have the friendliest history with Force ghosts.”

“That is quite reasonable,” the figure replied. He was tall and thin, wearing the armor of the corpse on the floor but no mask; he had high cheekbones and a nose that had been broken at least once. His hair was cut short, and his beard was neatly-trimmed. “I am Lord Otien. I served in the Ministry of War, and was set to become the head of Military Strategy and take my seat on the Dark Council before I was betrayed to the Republic and brought here.” Otien sighed. “I could not tell you how long ago that was; it may have been years or centuries.”

Zash spoke up. “I can tell you that it was before my time. Darth Azamin was head of Military Strategy when I was an apprentice.”

Otien shook his head. “I don’t know the name. I suppose I have been here a while. Tell me, who are you?”

“I am Darth Nox, Dark Councillor and commander of the Imperial Reclamation Service. My Dashade friend is either Khem Val, assassin and former companion to Tulak Hord, or Zash, former Darth and my former master. They share a body due to an accident with a Force artifact.” Tipanyu looked down at Otien’s body. “How did you end up down here?”

“Oh, I had no intention of staying on Belsavis for long. I began planning my escape from this prison the moment the shuttle set down. It took me years to find a guard susceptible to persuasion, and years more to gather what I needed to escape. These tunnels were more heavily guarded then, so I over time, I corrupted some of the local wildlife to serve me as hunters. They killed and devoured the guards, and we had made it this far when my focus slipped. My control of the beasts faltered, and one of them turned on me and gutted me.” Otien laughed. “But I had my revenge; I’d been building up toxins in my body so that I would be resistant to them, as a way of being able to survive outside the walls until help arrived. As it turned out, that made me toxic to the beasts. They learned quickly that it was dangerous to consume my flesh, and so my body rotted here while I watched helplessly.”

“You came this far, only for your own pet to betray you almost at your moment of triumph.” Tipanyu looked at Khem Val. “I think you and Zash will have a lot to talk about.”

“Oh, be quiet, apprentice,” Zash said, and Tipanyu stifled a laugh.

Lord Otien looked between them. “Take my mask,” he said, after a pause, “and return it to the Ministry of War. While you have it, I will accompany and advise you, and when we return to Dromund Kaas, perhaps my counsel will be of use to the Ministry.”

Tipanyu finally stowed her lightsaber and knelt, unlatching Lord Otien’s mask and removing it. Otien’s bare skull stared up at her from inside the helmet; she stared into its empty eye sockets for a moment before she stood again and placed the mask into her pack. “That sounds reasonable,” she said, and the Dashade nodded. “Very well. Let’s proceed.”


End file.
